Samsung dismisses Apple’s claims on smartphones

July 20, 2010 – South Korean cellphone manufacturer Samsung Electronics Tuesday dismissed claims by iPhone maker Apple that all smartphones suffer dropped signals when held in a certain way.

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Apple chief executive Steve Jobs last Friday publicly defended the new iPhone 4 from complaints about reception problems by saying other smartphones have similar antenna difficulties.

Jobs cited devices from Samsung, Canada’s Research in Motion that makes the Blackberry and Taiwan’s HTC, in an attempt to show the iPhone is not the only smartphone with the problem.

“Based on years of experience of designing high-quality phones, Samsung mobile phones employ an internal antenna design technology that optimises reception quality for any type of hand-grip use,” Samsung said in a statement.

Samsung officials said there had been no major customer complaints about the reception of the firm’s Omnia II smartphone, cited by Apple.

Some iPhone 4 users have complained that they lose reception when covering the lower left corner of the phone — whose unusual antenna wraps completely around the device — in what has been referred to as the “death grip”.

Jobs acknowledged the iPhone 4 drops slightly more calls than the iPhone 3GS, but said the issue had been overblown and was not unique to the iPhone 4.

But other cellphone manufacturers hit back.

“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable,” Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the co-chief executives of Research in Motion, said in a statement Monday.

Apple created an online page on “smartphone antenna performance” at Apple.com/antenna that shows the tests with RIM’s Blackberry Bold 9700, the HTC Droid Eris from HTC and the Samsung Omnia II.

Apple has promised to provide iPhone 4 users with a free handset case to help solve the reception problem.